Similar thing happened several times in last 5 trns with Rush complete 1500+ fuel and 200+ fighters
PE = Privs. Ship towed to deep space and again no fighting I understand no fuel no fight in deep space but 2ly from planet.

Very frustrating.

Defensive ideas requested.

Thanks Sinner

Up here in space, I'm looking down on you
My Lasers trace, Everything you do
There is no true escape
I'm watching all the time

What you can do (but possibly a bit difficult because of rounding): Alternate between very high and very low mass, so that he either can't tow you all the way to the waiting wolfpack, or that he at least loses the tower there, because he still has fuel left.

And of course, you can avoid getting towed by towing your own ship with low ID ships.

Sounds like you're fighting a pirate who knows what he's doing. Basically he'll know exactly how much fuel to put on his towing ship in order to run out of fuel at the same spot in space where he'll have cloakers waiting to rob your ship. In terms of the technique, there's no easy defence against it. If you're friendly with another cloaking race, trade for a 2-engined cloaker with a low ship ID. Then get your cloaker to tow the Rush - as it has a low ID, it should tow before the pirate ship has a chance to lock on a tow-beam. The priv can of course counter this by (a) robbing the tower, or (b) using a lower ID ship to tow first.

Effectively as the rebels you've got no real natural defence against the Privs, therefore it might be an idea to ally with someone that does - Feds/Lizards (lokis), Fascists (glory device), Birdmen (cloak), xtals (webs), Robots (large minefields).

Otherwise, you'll just have to lay down a larger number of minefields to secure your territory and head in another direction.

Rimstalker wrote:What you can do (but possibly a bit difficult because of rounding): Alternate between very high and very low mass, so that he either can't tow you all the way to the waiting wolfpack, or that he at least loses the tower there, because he still has fuel left.

Basically this won't work. There are only a handful of ships that have a large enough cargo / fuel capacity to vary the fuel required by the tower, and these ships are easily dealt with by other means available to the Privs (3x kill for instance). PM me if you want the document that details the Privs technique.

I can tow your Super Deep whether it has 1 fuel and no cargo, or 1200 fuel and 2600 cargo with an MCBR while always running out of fuel. Same for any other ship. Sadly, it only works in THost. Privateering in PHost is so much more difficult :/

As for the Rebel Commander. There are four options.
1: Minefields, loads of em, overlapping, and make sure your planets are not set to anything expected like ATT or NUK. If you lay enough, priv will likely move on to the next target, but he'll be coming back once he has the right beams.
2: Lizard or Fed Loki
3: Crystal webmines
4: Surrender and make a deal, privs are usually quite reasonable to accepting willing slaves

1. When a ship is ready to go (full of fuel and fighters) move it off the planet and into space. It is hard to rob a ship if you can not arrive cloaked to the same location as the target ship. It only needs to be 5 to 10 lys off the planet and moved at least a couple of lys every turn to make it very hard to guess where the ship will be the next turn.

2. Lots of mine fields. The Priv may be able to steal your ship but with lots of mine fields it will make it harder to take the stolen ship back to a SB to be re-crewed.

But within the Warpwell, at the same XY where your wolfpack is? I'd love to see that!

That of course is not possible
Because as soon as you start running at W1, your window of opening narrows.
However if you want to travel exactly 2ly, you can accept a mass change of about 1000 tonnes (on 4000).
And if you want to go exactly 1ly, you can bypass about 2000 tonnes (on 4000).

1. When a ship is ready to go (full of fuel and fighters) move it off the planet and into space. It is hard to rob a ship if you can not arrive cloaked to the same location as the target ship. It only needs to be 5 to 10 lys off the planet and moved at least a couple of lys every turn to make it very hard to guess where the ship will be the next turn.

2. Lots of mine fields. The Priv may be able to steal your ship but with lots of mine fields it will make it harder to take the stolen ship back to a SB to be re-crewed.

3. Hope for an ION Storm and use it as cover to attack the Priv.

I thought of this but if Privs is cloaked and set to intercept my Rush in space wont he still be able to intercept and not fight and then next turn tow me to a diferent destination of his choice?

Regard Sinner

Up here in space, I'm looking down on you
My Lasers trace, Everything you do
There is no true escape
I'm watching all the time

Sinner wrote:
I thought of this but if Privs is cloaked and set to intercept my Rush in space wont he still be able to intercept and not fight and then next turn tow me to a diferent destination of his choice?

Regard Sinner

Setting PE=Privateer will mean that your rush will fight the priv ship at the end of movement. If by some miracle he runs out of fuel exactly when he reaches your ship, then no combat will occur, however you can then tow off his ship to surrender at a starbase

Be aware that the cunning pirate may give a cloaker to an ally to do the intercepting, thus by-passing your PE setting.

Privs managed to tow a Rush even though their mission was towing the IDs mentione above.

Uhhhhh.... I suspect you may not understand the tow rules. You need to get the low ID ships to tow the Rushes, not the other way around. The reason for this is that the tow order is done by ship ID, therefore having your low ID ships doing the towing means they will move off the planet before the priv ships (with higher ID) get the chance to tow you. Having the Rushes doing the towing will only work if the Rush itself has a low ID (or at least a lower ID than the towing priv ship). If the priv sees you doing this however, he'll probably just bring in his lowest ID cloaker to tow off your towers, thus opening up the Rushes to the higher ID priv towers.

1. When a ship is ready to go (full of fuel and fighters) move it off the planet and into space. It is hard to rob a ship if you can not arrive cloaked to the same location as the target ship. It only needs to be 5 to 10 lys off the planet and moved at least a couple of lys every turn to make it very hard to guess where the ship will be the next turn.

2. Lots of mine fields. The Priv may be able to steal your ship but with lots of mine fields it will make it harder to take the stolen ship back to a SB to be re-crewed.

3. Hope for an ION Storm and use it as cover to attack the Priv.

I thought of this but if Privs is cloaked and set to intercept my Rush in space wont he still be able to intercept and not fight and then next turn tow me to a diferent destination of his choice?

Regard Sinner

A ship (any ship) can only have one mission set at a time so a Priv ship can be set to either cloak or intercept but not both. (Cloaking intercept is badly named and not quite as it sounds)

The Priv can be cloaked and try to guess your waypoint (which is why you move at least 5lys a turn) or they can intercept you and arrive at your ship(s) the next turn but not cloaked. At which point you will attack him (with PE set to Priv) or he has run out of fuel at which point he is no longer a problem. (Ships with zero fuel can not rob)

Privs managed to tow a Rush even though their mission was towing the IDs mentione above.

Uhhhhh.... I suspect you may not understand the tow rules. You need to get the low ID ships to tow the Rushes, not the other way around. The reason for this is that the tow order is done by ship ID, therefore having your low ID ships doing the towing means they will move off the planet before the priv ships (with higher ID) get the chance to tow you. Having the Rushes doing the towing will only work if the Rush itself has a low ID (or at least a lower ID than the towing priv ship). If the priv sees you doing this however, he'll probably just bring in his lowest ID cloaker to tow off your towers, thus opening up the Rushes to the higher ID priv towers.

Of course, this is where the 2nd part with alternating mass comes in, which hopefully allows you to catch his lowest ID ship . But then again, the Priv can gamble on his tower having low crew so that it gets captured and can be stolen back